reconcileable to policy and adequate to justice, as to make the confinement of the debtor more tolerable, or more proportioned to the quantum or aggravation of his default, and the claim of the creditor more secure. . If all the expences of unjust arrests were at the same time so well regulated as to fall on the plaintiff, without the formality of a tedious law-suit, it would prevent an incredible number of those which are so greatly villainous and vexatious. But, even as the case now stands, no man fhould be obliged to lie in prison for months together for his fees only, when he becomes dischargeable by supersedeas on the dise continuance of an action; since a debtor may frequently and from various causes be relieved from his debt, and yet remain a prisoner for years together from his incapacity to discharge the costs, or pay the fees of prison. This is an evil in our laws, which loudly calls for amendment, and which the wisdom of our legislative body would do well to consider and redress.. But to advert to unjust arrests. A man may be arrested from mere malice or caprice, without being. applied to for the debt, and without any account being rendered to him of the claim this has frequently happened, and is perhaps sometimes induced by an assurance, felt by the plaintiff, that he shall not suffer for his wantonness; for, unless the suit be carried to an issue, or trial, which he is persuaded of the inability of the sufferer to atchieve, the costs will in course fall upon the person of the debtor. If the plaintiff therefore could be made liable to the expence, it would in a great measure, if not totally, put an end to such evils; as he would hardly ever proceed to an arrest, without a clear probability of recovering the debt. In the execu tion of this part of the law, the expences should be made trifling to the debtor, and the fee for examining the sheriff's office for detainers by other actions should undoubtedly be abolished, as exorbitant and unjust. The sheriff himself should gratuitously cause to be made known to his prisoner whether there be any detainer against him: for the fee in question is exceedingly oppressive; it is an abuse of power, against the operation of which the Society have continually remonstrated, but hitherto have been unable to reform, If a debtor be arrested and in confinement, he should be regularly proceeded against, without any delay, until charged in execution; and, in default of such a speedy proceeding, he should be entitled to sue out his supersedeas, without suffering the inconvenience of three terms to elapse, which he is obliged to endure, the present practice of the courts not allowing a remedy for this evil. The Society are aware that the following remark may be offered as an objection: "How can a debtor be proceeded against during a vacation, the "courts being shut?" It is extremely difficult for an individual to suggest a remedy: but, when we consider consider that in both Houses of Parliament persons are to be found, whose learning and experience will enable them to suggest and to afford an adequate remedy, when once the subject is taken into the consideration of the Legislature; it is to be hoped that the importance of the subject will induce the Legislature speedily to deliberate upon it; for the delay of justice is very injurious to a commercial people, and inconsistent with the idea of good government: yet how common is it, for the plain tiffs against persons committed to the city compters, to deliver declarations, and proceed no farther, until the debtor, at his own expence, obtains a rule of court for proceeding to trial! In this undertaking, though the expence be small, numberless debtors are not able to defray it, but by the humane assistance of some casual benefactor; nay, and many instances can be adduced, in default of such a friend, of the unfortunate sufferer having sold his cloaths and his bedding to answer this purpose: and after all, after the base conduct of the supposed creditor, and the debtor's long confinement, the debt has upon trial been proved supposititious, or pretended only, in which case, although the debtor may gain his cause in a court of justice, yet he must submit to the vexatious hardship of having been deprived of his liberty, his time, his goods, his reputation, and his business, without redress; unable to prosecute the villain who ruined him, for he has neither money for law, nor for bread. This instrument, called a declaration, was originally intended merely to set forth at an early period the cause of the action, and the defendant's refusal to make satisfaction to the plaintiff; and here it may be observed indeed, that this instrument should always set forth the names of two persons, as pledges to the defendant for carrying on the action to a trial; but how is it perverted, and that even by the very practitioners of the law of the land itself! According to the present practice, the declaration cannot be delivered to the debtor till a later period, till after the return of the writ, which may be several weeks, according to the distance of time from the arrest, till the return is made, and which is always governed by the term; so that the debtor is punished by imprisonment, at the will of a plaintiff, long before he is, or can be apparently, deserving of the penalty. The declaration, which might be comprised in a few lines, is generally stretched out and tortured by a farrago, not of language, but of Babelisms, an unintelligible jargon of words without ideas, that may well be conceived to disgrace even the law code of a Hottentot, and which would crowd six pages if printed in this book. To these disgraceful evils may be added that, notwithstanding the law has wisely provided that two persons, on behalf of the plaintiff, shall be pledges to prosecute to a trial, yet the names of the pledges inserted in the declaration are always fictitious; John Doe and Richard Roe, who do not exist, and therefore cannot be punished punished, being the ridiculous and sham pledges in the prosecution of a false or pretended claim. This is an evil and an absurdity which undoubtedly ought to be immediately corrected; for, as it now stands, an innocent man may be punished by means of a law process carried on through a chain of wretched fictions; and the fabricator of these fictions may often escape unpunished, either by an evasion of the laws, or by the amazing expence which ever attends a prosecution against an unjust plaintiff, or the associates of his base proceedings. As law should be founded in Equity, and supported by Truth, so should its practice be regulated according to the principle upon which it is enacted; and whilst the larger debtor may be restored to his liberty by the mild laws of a bankruptcy, the smaller should be religiously and scrupulously protected against bearing a severer punishment; and, when his effects have been surrendered upon oath for the benefit of his creditors, he should be wholly set free from all future demands, in the same manner as a certificated bankrupt: for the dread of imprisonment gives birth to artful and tricking inventions, it is the parent of knavery, and the nurse of accumulated crimes. If therefore imprisonment could be avoided, a man in distressful and precarious circumstances, convinced that the greatest evil which could befal him under a reverse of fortune would be to give up all his property for the payment of his debts, would then, with a calm and honest firmness, submit to |